8 ms·
IBM quantum computers now finish some tasks in hours, not months
- dayofthedaleks 6y ago1) Am I hitting a paywall or is the article really only 4 paragraphs long, amounting to a directly-relayed press release? 2) Is it more likely that this is funded by the NSA, or instead that the NSA has had something similar for decades and this is a ploughsare-type filtration of techniques into the private sector?
- zitterbewegung 6y ago1) Yes 2) No, ploughsare filtration techniques seem to go in reverse like self driving cars.
- Bostonian 6y agoWhat does the phrase "ploughsare-type filtration of techniques into the private sector" mean?
- tsomctl 6y agoI'm thinking it's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swords_to_ploughshares https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swords_to_ploughshares
- daxfohl 6y agoQiskit has been out forever (https://qiskit.org/ https://qiskit.org/). What do they mean by "plans to release it in 2021"?
- kitd 6y agov1.0 release?
- ericmay 6y agoIf anyone is interested - my old team published a primer on quantum computing and using Qiskit that should be quite appropriate for a developer audience. Code samples start at page 48. https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.11513v1 https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.11513v1 I have no involvement now and have moved on to a different company. The team has also gone on to do way bigger and better things and has published some additional papers that are way over my skill level and knowledge.
- amir734jj 6y agoThanks for sharing
- dvh 6y agoI think this year will IBM factor 55 using Shor's.
- AtlasBarfed 6y agoGenuine question, is this sarcasm or reality? IBM's marketing of things like this is highly questionably, especially since blockchain and watson turned out to be such smokescreens from the marketplace/product/adoption standpoint. 1000 qubits in two years seems like a "quantum" leap based on what I read.
- klyrs 6y ago> 1000 qubits in two years seems like a "quantum" leap based on what I read. It is; that's enough to make a single error-corrected qubit. So the leap here is effectively one quantum
- suifbwish 6y agoThose SOBs were too busy planning the demise of CentOS to bother
- DebtDeflation 6y ago>Genuine question, is this sarcasm or reality? Pretty sure it's both. The hype level now being applied to all things "quantum" makes the hype that was applied to AI a few years ago seem like mere puffery.
- refulgentis 6y agoIMHO thats a bit blinkered, i have a deep interest in the field and the only mainstream publications on it clearly note there's no practical applications yet, and we're looking at a 5-10 year horizon of _maybe_ finding a niche application that actually improves with a handful of qubits Contrast that with AI, which caused formation of new departments and hiring binges throughout industry, including industry far outside tech
- 6y ago
- m-chrzan 6y agoNote that this is not about quantum speedup, but, rather conversely, making the classical part of the computation more efficient. Still important to get these quantum-adjacent things correct, but not as groundbreaking as one could hope for just reading the headline.
- silexia 6y agoI am pretty impressed. Also, this makes digital currencies even more suspect.
- Covzire 6y agoAS I understand it, Quantum computers as of yet are only useful for a relatively small set of obscure operations. They're extremely fast of course, but they're not a drop in replacement for basic gate operations that classical computers and their crypto algorithms use. A cryptocoin like bitcoin uses multiple algorithms making them an exceptionally difficult problem to program a quantum computer to handle. If you ask me, we'll hear about Quantum computers breaking a lot of other things before they get to crypto coins.
- m-chrzan 6y agoThis is specifically what you shouldn't be worried about just based on the speedup that the article focuses on. This is about a constant-factor speedup from a better-engineered classical component, not the exponential speedup you get from being able to handle additional qubits.
- ashtonkem 6y agoIf quantum computers break regular encryption, then the sudden collapse of Bitcoin would be the literal last of our worries. The inability to buy things using computers securely would be a much bigger problem, especially given how computerized banking is. Good luck getting cash when your local bank is trying to figure out procedures that haven’t been used in a literal generation.
- gonzo41 6y ago
- undefined1 6y agowhat are the implications with regard to encryption and crypto, if any?
- upofadown 6y agoThis is only about speeding up the support stuff. No actual quantum improvement is discussed. There is a tremendous amount of misinformation floating around on this topic. The short answer is that we are not even close to starting yet. This has a good discussion: * https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/59795/largest-integer-factored-by-shors-algorithm https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/59795/largest-int... Note the new and exciting estimate of only 20 million physical qubits required to crack RSA 2048. The article mentions the hope of achieving 1000 physical qubits.
- ceejayoz 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count 1,000 on a chip in 1970. 20M by the late 1990s or so.
- hannob 6y agoNone at all.
- xirbeosbwo1234 6y agoDoes "crypto" refer to the branch of mathematics or to the scam? It has substantial theoretical implications in cryptography, but any practical applications are decades off. Cryptocurrency couldn't get any more broken, so it has no implications for that.
- core-questions 6y ago> Cryptocurrency couldn't get any more broken So you have a way to steal Bitcoins?
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y ago"Qiskit and improved hardware will lead to a day when anyone can put quantum computing to use, even if it’s through a distant mainframe." J. Fingas, Engaget, 2021 "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943
- greatgoat420 6y agoSo, there is a world market for five quantum computers that anyone can use?
- dr_dshiv 6y ago"I think there is a world market for maybe five cloud computer companies" — what Thomas Watson meant
- human 6y agoEven that quote would be ridiculous. There must be 10,000’s serious cloud providers.
- oblio 6y ago> "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943 Watson was not wrong, even though everybody likes to quote this and act like he was dumb. At the time he was saying that a computer was the size of a 2 story building and probably cost half a billion dollars in today's money (maybe even more?) plus who knows how much in maintenance costs. And their applicability was extremely limited plus potential customers didn't even realize that they'd need them.
- staplers 6y agoWhat's funny is we might get there someday with enough server-side push and wearable/mobile/PC tech pushing computation to the cloud and streaming it "down" to nimble devices. EDIT: After further thought, I realize this is the point OP is making.
- mhh__ 6y ago
- ezekiel68 6y agoEven given the caveats about what was actually sped up -- coming soon: "It's 2022 and I cannot believe we are expected to wait hours for this process to finish."